Road Safety Bill  - Standing Committee A

[Janet Anderson in the Chair]

Road Safety Bill [Lords]

Brian Iddon: On a point of order, Mrs. Anderson. I refer back to an amendment that I moved last Thursday under clause 16 on retro-reflective markings. I withdrew that amendment on the grounds that the Minister said that it might not be permissible to fit such markings on heavy goods vehicles in Britain. He said:
“I remind my hon. Friend that we have the powers to permit the tape, but not to require it. We do not need new powers in order to permit it.”—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 23 March 2006; c. 150.]
Since last Thursday’s sitting, I have received notification that the Commission has allowed the Italians to proceed on a legal basis to fit such marker tape to their HGVs. If I provide the Minister with the Italian legislation, which I have to hand, would he reconsider the matter before Report?

Janet Anderson: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we have already debated clause 16 and amendment No. 77, but I am sure that the Minister will want to make a note of what the hon. Gentleman said and perhaps we can return to the matter on Report.

Owen Paterson: Further to that point of order, Mrs. Anderson. The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) is absolutely right: the Italian Government legislated in exactly the same way that we proposed to do through our two amendments. They specified domestic vehicles over 3.5 tonnes, not 7.5 tonnes as we proposed, and to date there has been no objection from the European Commission. As we understand it, such material has been placed on Italian lorries, and the Commission has not said that that is illegal.
During last Thursday’s sitting, the Minister suggested that
“the amendment and the clause are redundant and perhaps illegal.”—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 23 March 2006; c. 148.]
Would the Minister clarify the status of amendment No. 77, which would have had the effect of allowing this material by 1 January 2007? Are we in a position to debate that amendment at the end of the proceedings, because it comes right at the end of the Bill, or would it be better to refer to the matter on Report? That would give the Minister and his officials time to make a careful study of what has happened in Italy, to establish how the Italians have done it and to find out why there is a difference in legal opinion between the Italian and British Governments.

Janet Anderson: I am advised that we have already debated amendment No. 77, and clause 16 no longer stands part of the Bill. We debated it and the Committee reached a decision, but it will be possible to return to the matter on Report, and I am sure that the Minister will want to take account of the points raised.

Clause 20 - Causing death by careless, or inconsiderate, driving

Sally Keeble: I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 24, line 36, column 4, leave out ‘the statutory maximum’ and insert
‘12 months (in England and Wales) or six months (in Scotland) or the statutory maximum, or both’.

Janet Anderson: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 63, in page 24, line 39, column 4, leave out
‘5 years or a fine or both’
and insert ‘a fine’
New clause 8—Causing death by reckless driving—
‘(1)In the Road Traffic Act 1988, after section 1 insert—
“Causing death by reckless driving
(1)A person who causes the death of another person by driving a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road or other public place recklessly is guilty of an offence.
(2)For the purposes of subsection (1) a person is to be regarded as driving recklessly if—
(a)the way he drives falls far below what would be expected of a competent driver and this must have been evident to him, or
(b)it must have been evident to him that driving the vehicle he was driving or proposing to drive in its current state was reckless.”.
(2)In the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, after section 24 insert—
“Alternative verdicts (reckless driving)
(1)Where—
(a)a person charged with an offence under a provision of the Road Safety Act 2006(c.) specified in the first column of the Table below (where the general nature of the offences is also indicated) is found not guilty of that offence, but
(b)the allegations in the indictment or information (or in Scotland complaint) amount to or include an allegation of an offence under one or more of the provisions specified in the corresponding entry in the second column,
he may be convicted of that offence or of one or more of those offences.
 Offence ChargedAlternative Section (causing death bySection 1 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 (causing death by dangerous driving).”. (3)In the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, Schedule 2, at end insert—
 “Section (causing On indictment14 years imprisonment, disqualification and obligatory endorsement.”.’. New clause 9—Causing death by dangerous driving—
‘(1)In section 2A(1)(a) of the Road Traffic Act 1988, line 1 leave out “far” and insert “significantly”.
(2)In Part 1 of Schedule 2 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 (prosecution and punishment of offences) in the entry relating to section 2 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 leave out “14” and insert “7”.’.
New clause 24—Dangerous driving after failure to stop—
‘(1)In the Road Traffic Act 1988, after section 2A insert—
“2BDangerous driving after failing to stop a mechanically propelled vehicle or cycle when required by a constable.
A person who drives a mechanically propelled vehicle or cycle dangerously within the meaning of sections 2 and 2A of the Road Traffic Act 1988 after being required to stop by a constable and having failed to do so within the meaning of section 163 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, shall be guilty of an offence.”
(2)In Schedule 1 to the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, after the entry relating to section 2 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 insert—
 “RTA section 2BDangerous driving after failing to stop a mechanically propelled vehicle or cycle when required by a constableSections 1, 11 and 12(1) of this Act” (3)In Part 1 of Schedule 2 to the Road Traffic Offenders Act, after the entry relating to section 2 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 insert—
 “RTA section 2BDangerous driving after failing to stop a mechanically propelled vehicle or cycle when required by a constable(a)On summary conviction, 2 years imprisonment, a fine on level 5 of the standard scale, obligatory disqualification and endorsement, 3-11   (b)On indictment, 5 years imprisonment, a fine, obligatory disqualification and endorsement, 3-11”.’.  New clause 25—Dangerous driving— ‘In Part 1 of Schedule 2 to the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 (c. 53) (prosecution and punishment of offences: offences under the Traffic Acts), in the entry relating to section 2 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (c. 52) (dangerous driving), in paragraph (b) in column (4) (punishment on conviction on indictment), for “2 years” substitute “5 years”.’. Ms Keeble: I am grateful to be able to propose this amendment and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for providing the time to do so. The amendment makes good the damage—some might say sabotage—done by their lordships to the causing death by careless driving provisions introduced by the Government in the other place. The Government originally introduced the measures with the provision of a prison sentence of up to a year for conviction in a magistrates court, and up to five years for conviction in Crown court. Their lordships deleted the prison sentence for the magistrates court, and I note that the Opposition propose to delete it for the Crown court. Government amendment No. 1 will restore the option of a prison sentence for a magistrates court and give full effect to Alexine’s law, as it became known in my constituency after a young girl who was killed in a road traffic accident caused by a careless driver. There is also a new clause in my name that would extend the prison sentence that can be imposed for causing serious injury.
New clause 25—Dangerous driving—
‘In Part 1 of Schedule 2 to the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 (c. 53) (prosecution and punishment of offences: offences under the Traffic Acts), in the entry relating to section 2 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (c. 52) (dangerous driving), in paragraph (b) in column (4) (punishment on conviction on indictment), for “2 years” substitute “5 years”.’.

Sally Keeble: I am grateful to be able to propose this amendment and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for providing the time to do so. The amendment makes good the damage—some might say sabotage—done by their lordships to the causing death by careless driving provisions introduced by the Government in the other place. The Government originally introduced the measures with the provision of a prison sentence of up to a year for conviction in a magistrates court, and up to five years for conviction in Crown court. Their lordships deleted the prison sentence for the magistrates court, and I note that the Opposition propose to delete it for the Crown court. Government amendment No. 1 will restore the option of a prison sentence for a magistrates court and give full effect to Alexine’s law, as it became known in my constituency after a young girl who was killed in a road traffic accident caused by a careless driver. There is also a new clause in my name that would extend the prison sentence that can be imposed for causing serious injury.
A lot of discussion in Committee has focused on young people, because they are disproportionately the victims of road traffic accidents. I took up the issue because of young people. When I was given a slot in the private Members’ Bills ballot this year, I held a consultation with sixth-formers, who chose the careless driving provision as the measure that they  most wanted to see on the statute book. They came to Parliament with Mr. and Mrs. Melnik, the parents of young Alexine who was killed, and lobbied the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who has responsibility for the matter in the Home Office. They wanted to put right the current injustice, which allows a driver who is responsible for the death of a person by virtue of their careless driving to escape with just a slap on the wrist. The Melniks saw their daughter’s killer walk out of court with just a fine.
There has been discussion about whether a person should be convicted of an offence because of carelessness; we all know that we are guilty of carelessness at some stage or another. In a sense, that issue should have been resolved, as their lordships did not seek to delete the entire clause, but the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) opposed the offence on such grounds on Second Reading. I do not want to go too far into the background of the issue of death by careless driving, because we might want to deal with the matter during a stand part debate. However, if you are happy for me to do so, Mrs. Anderson, I shall deal with some of that background now, because it relates to the amendment and the importance of having the option of a prison sentence in the magistrates court.

David Kidney: There is a lot of debate about whether there will be a sentence of imprisonment in the magistrates court, but is my hon. Friend aware that the House of Lords has also inadvertently taken away the magistrates’ power of a community punishment order?

Sally Keeble: Yes, that is right. I was going to argue that the Lords amendment was a wrecking one, which removed the impact of the extra offence because it removed the measures that people most want—not just a new offence but a proportionate punishment for that offence, which is widely considered to be a prison sentence. With that comes the option of a community order.
We all accept that there are degrees of carelessness and at some stage we have all been careless while we are driving. However, there are differences between the levels of carelessness. There is minor carelessness, which occurs when a person’s attention is deflected by something happening on the road, but there is also substantial and gross carelessness, where the level of care taken falls well below what is expected. In such circumstances, there is clearly a different level of culpability. A separate offence of causing death by careless driving is therefore appropriate so that it is perceived that carelessness is not always blameless.
The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell also said that the offence of causing death by careless driving should not be judged by its consequences. He felt that it was unfair that an offence be dictated by the fact that someone died. I would argue that that is the case with other offences, and I shall give an actual example, because hypothetical cases can seem a bit far-fetched.  Although it might appear to stray slightly from the mark, it deals with the idea that it might be possible for an offence to be judged by its consequences.
In my constituency a perfectly normal young man—a student—got drunk in a pub during a happy hour promotion. On the way out, he got into a bit of an altercation with a man who happened to be a bouncer. He was not on duty at the time, but he knew how to fight and was quite heavily built. The young man baited the bouncer and he hit the young man, who then fell over and hit his head on the pavement. It was just a short fight so the police were not called. An ambulance was called, but it was sent away and the young man’s friends took him home. Several days later, he died. It transpired that there was a direct link between his hitting his head and his death, although he died several days later.

Owen Paterson: I am listening very carefully to the hon. Lady, because we disagree fundamentally on the matter. Does she not agree that the person who laid the blow had an intention to hit someone? That was not carelessness; he was not blinded by sunlight turning round a corner. Will she answer this point? The person in question must have had some intent. A person does not hit another carelessly; they intend to hit someone.

Sally Keeble: Let me continue. The hon. Gentleman will see why I have used that example.
When the young man died, the bouncer went to the police station in floods of tears and pleaded self-defence, at which point the burden of proof shifted and no charges were brought. The Crown Prosecution Service, which explained the matter at some length to me and the family concerned, said that because the young man had died, manslaughter was the only charge that could be brought. There was no possibility of a lesser offence—assault, grievous bodily harm, actual bodily harm, or whatever it could be—because the young man had died, the bouncer had pleaded self-defence and the burden of proof had shifted.
The charges were entirely dictated by the consequences and the bouncer did not even face court, to the great grief of the family, as hon. Members can understand. Clearly, there was an intention to hit the young man, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, and he was knocked over, but although a man died the bouncer walked away scot-free. It is not true to say that the offence is judged only by what the person does or intends to do; it is also determined by the consequences of what happens, even if, in some instances—as in this case—they were not intended.

Owen Paterson: This is a most important point. The hon. Lady would agree that her story shows that there was no carelessness in that case. There was intent to lay a blow, even in self-defence. However, we are talking about drivers who may just be blinded by bright sunlight on a winter’s afternoon while coming round a corner and do not see what is happening; they are blinded in a moment described as careless, but over which they have no control. They have no intention of being careless. In the case that the hon. Lady mentions,  the bouncer had a clear intention to defend himself by landing a blow, so there was no carelessness at all, but there was deliberate intent.

Sally Keeble: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman did not listen carefully to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, who did not argue about the intent. Nobody would accept that the action of somebody blinded by sunlight was careless; it is an accident. The point is that the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell said that an offence should not be judged by its consequences. It was not that he did not accept that it was death by careless driving; he did not accept that somebody should be judged on the basis of the consequences of what happened. It was the “death” bit that he objected to. That is inaccurate, because for other offences the consequences dictate whether a charge is laid and a decision is made that an offence is committed. The bouncer could not be charged with anything because the consequence of his action was death and the CPS judged that he could be charged only with something involving death.
Of course, the circumstances of each case have to be considered carefully, which is why various penalties are open to the courts. I am saying that there is a different order of magnitude when carelessness results in death, and it is right that there should be. The general public would also perceive that that is an appropriate way to consider a serious accident caused by careless driving, as opposed to a pure chance of fate if, for example, a person is blinded by bright sunlight, or something happens that is clearly outwith somebody’s control.

Owen Paterson: That is helpful. However, although the hon. Lady implies that there are degrees of carelessness, the problem is that the clause does not deal with that. There is careless driving when someone is blinded by what can be called an act of God and other cases of carelessness when, as the hon. Lady implies, the person might bear some blame because of intent or incompetence. The problem is that under the clause as drafted, a court will not be able to differentiate between the types of carelessness.

Sally Keeble: If someone goes round a corner and is blinded by bright sunlight, it is not carelessness; those are circumstances outwith their control. There must be very careful guidance about levels of carelessness, which my hon. Friend the Minister will come to when it is appropriate.

Stephen Ladyman: The hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) has forgotten that later clauses define what we mean by careless driving.

Sally Keeble: I thank my hon. Friend. Obviously, therefore, the Crown Prosecution Service must carefully consider the issue of bringing charges. As with any other crime, there will be levels and tests that have to be judged in such a case. First, people understand levels of carelessness and, secondly, the arguments for saying that an offence should not be  determined by the consequences do not hold in other areas. I do not accept the criticism made by the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell on Second Reading.
I called their lordships’ amendment a wrecking amendment—

Alistair Carmichael: I am following the hon. Lady’s arguments with great care. She may be right when she says that the consequences should be taken into account, but does not a substantial body of case law state that when determining the sentence in a driving charge it is merely the standard of driving that is taken into consideration and not the consequences? If careless driving results in a collision—if we remove the emotion, the causing death element—a person will be sentenced on the standard of their driving, not the consequences or the damage caused to the other car.

Sally Keeble: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I think that what he is saying is that the decision is made on sentencing and that surely it is then that a range of factors have to be taken into account. We are discussing whether there is an offence in the first place and whether it is a more serious offence because it results in a death. This is not about the sentencing but about the offence, the determination of whether there is an offence and what type of an offence it is. That point was brought up on Second Reading by the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, and I profoundly disagreed with him having seen how, in other cases, whether an offence has been committed and what offence a person is charged with are determined by the consequences of the action. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) is talking about sentencing, which is further down the line.

Alistair Carmichael: What she has described require express provision in the Bill. As it stands, consequences will not be taken into account.

Sally Keeble: This is an offence of causing death by careless driving; that is the nature of the offence and that is what we are arguing about. The Conservative party disagrees with that proposal for a range of reasons, some of which were partly discussed on Second Reading and to which we will return. Conservative Members disagreed, first, with the notion of people being punished for carelessness, when we are all careless sometimes. I have dealt partly with that matter, and the Minister will deal with it at greater length and refer to different types of carelessness. Secondly, they objected to the prison sentence, because they thought it was too serious, and I shall come to that. Thirdly, on Second Reading, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell also said that he disagreed with the proposal because he did not think an offence should be determined by the consequences of what happened. I disagree with that, too. There were three grounds on which the Conservative party disagreed with the proposal, and I think that it is completely wrong.
What motivated the Melniks and hundreds more like them—my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East has done much more work on this subject than me over a good number of years, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney)—was a profound sense of injustice over the inequity between the crime and the punishment that it receives. Their lordships’ amendment perpetuated that by removing the option of imposing a prison sentence in a magistrates court. That would enable offenders who think that there is a high chance of their being convicted to opt to plead guilty in the magistrates court, knowing that they would leave with a fine and could not even receive, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford said, a community sentence. They would not face a prison sentence, which, in some cases, society would judge to be a reasonable punishment. I would argue that the same applies to the extension of the penalty for causing serious injury.
To give a sense of why people feel such injustice, in Northampton recently a woman who was seven months pregnant was sent to prison for one or two weeks for failing to ensure that one of her sons went to school. Given that it threw a family into chaos, many people might think that that was an unreasonable, even silly, penalty. However, failing to send one’s child to school pales into insignificance when compared with the offence of causing death by grossly careless driving. The public would perceive a credibility gap between sending a pregnant woman to prison for not sending one of her children to school and discharging with a fine someone who has been grossly careless and killed a person through dangerous driving.
In addition, if the option of a prison sentence is not retained for magistrates courts, the credibility gap will not be plugged—there would be no sanctions between that for causing a fatal road traffic accident and that for being guilty of a minor traffic offence. That concept is taken further in Opposition amendment No. 63, to which I am also completely opposed. I am sure that the hon. Member for North Shropshire will correct me if I have misunderstood it. It would remove the option of a prison sentence even in the Crown court. That would lead to a meaningless offence. To have an offence of causing death by careless driving on the statute book, and to say that it ranks no higher than any other minor offence and is worthy only of a fine would be a complete nonsense and would perpetuate the most profound credibility gap in our criminal justice system.
Amendment No. 63 does no justice to some of those who have campaigned on the issue. The former excellent Labour MP for Wellingborough, Paul Stinchcombe, started the campaign with the Melniks, which the present hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) has continued and work hard on. Their lordships’ amendment has ripped the heart out of the offence and left it as a limp tool which confirms that someone is guilty of a gross offence but gives the courts no scope for imposing any penalty that the general public would perceive to have matched the crime.
It worries me that on this and other occasions the Opposition have talked tough on road safety but, once it is time to decide what should be done, have been on  the side of some unsafe driving practices. They need to understand that if they talk tough on road safety they must match that, by supporting the creation of new offences backed by appropriate measures and sanctions. I urge the hon. Member for North Shropshire and his party to withdraw amendment No. 63 and not divide the Committee on this important provision, which plugs a credibility gap in our criminal justice system, has been campaigned for on both sides of the House, and responds to a profound sense of injustice among many people.

Greg Knight: Does the hon. Lady accept, in this discussion of justice, that there are circumstances in which it might be equally unjust to take the attitude that because someone has died someone must go to prison?

Sally Keeble: I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. A family member of mine died in a road traffic accident, and I completely understand that it must not be the family’s grief that puts someone in prison. However, the right hon. Gentleman should also accept that there is a big credibility gap between the offence of causing death by dangerous driving, which carries 10 years or—

David Kidney: Fourteen years.

Sally Keeble: Fourteen years, thank you. There is a big gap between that and the minor traffic offences for which people are just fined. That is the problem; there is nothing in between. People must understand that there is a difference between driving 60 miles on the wrong side of the road—which is dangerous driving—and killing someone, and doing something that is not that bad but that falls short of the expected standards of care, and the duty of care, that a normal driver has towards members of the public. A halfway house, which does not have such a high threshold, will none the less be more than just a slap over the wrist, a little fine, and then “Off you go to do it all over again.”

Henry Bellingham: The hon. Lady obviously feels strongly about the subject, but my concern is that unless the careless driving that causes the death is aggravated by some factor such as, for example, the fact that the person concerned was driving a car with bald tyres, or was racing another car, there should not be a custodial sentence. In my constituency fairly recently someone was driving along a road on a motor cycle when a travelling salesman pulled out. The motor cycle was in the blind spot and the motor cyclist was killed. Does the hon. Lady feel that that one-off—and appalling—lack of judgment, which many of us have shown in other circumstances, but without fatal consequences, should lead to that guy being imprisoned?

Sally Keeble: I do not want to be judge and jury on an individual case. My hon. Friend the Minister will deal with some points about what constitutes careless driving. As has been pointed out, that is covered later in the Bill. The public perception is clear from the way  in which prosecutions go, and the difficulty in getting convictions for dangerous driving, because of the high thresholds; the paltry number of cases in which people have been charged with or convicted of manslaughter because of the way in which they were driving is also relevant.
There is a big difference between those matters and a minor traffic offence, and the provision of an offence in the middle ground would make the point that there is a standard of driving that may not be dangerous but is not to the standard expected of a normal, careful, considerate driver. The courts will have at their disposal a range of appropriate sanctions. That is what the measure before us will do.
I urge Opposition Members not to push amendment No. 63 to a vote, and to support the Government’s amendment, which, as I said, plugs a credibility gap, provides the courts with more options to deal appropriately with the range of driving offences that we see on our roads, and has been talked about for a long time. This is not just a new, or a “back of a fag packet”, proposal—not that anything the Government put forward ever is. The public have campaigned strongly for the proposal, and it meets a profound sense of the need for greater justice in some of our road traffic legislation.

Owen Paterson: The hon. Lady referred to the Official Report on Second Reading. I shall begin with a little point: all of us have enormous admiration for the Hansard reporters and the way that they take down words that we—probably—gabble. It is incumbent on us to go up after a debate and check our speeches, but, unfortunately, I had an engagement and did not do so. The hard copy of that debate reads:
“the effect of the effects”,
 but actually I said:
“the effect of the offence”.—[Official Report, 8 March 2006; Vol.d¤443, c. 905.]
That has been corrected in the electronic copy. Obviously, I am very grateful to the Hansard reporters for all their hard work—it was a particularly unfortunate word that slipped, which I did not have a chance to correct.
Clause 20, as we have seen from the opening speech by the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble), is the most contentious clause in the Bill. There have been some fraught cases which have been publicised, and, obviously, we are all deeply sympathetic to those involved. I shall not talk about individual cases. I am not a lawyer, and we should be aware that we only read the newspaper reports and do not have access to the detailed papers to which lawyers in the court cases would have had access.
We recognise that this is a fraught area, with which the last Conservative, and the current Labour Government have wrestled. I agree totally with the hon. Lady about a credibility gap. There is a problem with cases in which, tragically, innocent people have been killed in road accidents and it is thought that the criminal justice system has not dealt with the driver appropriately.
The Government’s consultation paper, “Review of Traffic Offences involving Bad Driving”, shows the complexity of the issue. I have read that paper several times. Bad driving is not a problem just in this country—I have looked at evidence from Australia and America. It is a problem in all western societies, where it is being debated.

Sally Keeble: On the point about Australia, the hon. Gentleman is wrong—there is a provision in Australia similar to the one before us. It is not quite the same, but it would have the same impact as the death by careless driving provision.

Owen Paterson: Yes, I am aware that there have been several debates in Australia and America legislatures on that issue. Various countries have approached the problem in a similar way to us, and I think that when the hon. Lady hears our proposals she will realise that they are similar to what has been set down satisfactorily in other countries.
We all offer our deepest sympathies to the victims’ families, but, as we said on Second Reading, we must frame law that is workable and which will deliver justice—the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight). The current legal framework offers prosecutors a series of options in cases involving road traffic accidents. As the hon. Lady said, we have the offence of manslaughter, which offers life in prison. Currently, we also have causing death by dangerous driving, with a maximum of 14 years; causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs, which also offers 14 years’ imprisonment; dangerous driving, with a maximum of a six-month sentence in a magistrates court and of two years in a Crown court; and careless driving, for which there is no custodial sentence.
Clause 20 proposes to add the offence of causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving, which carries a possible five-year sentence to be imposed in a Crown court. We are opposed to that in principle. It cannot be right to imprison someone for a moment of carelessness, however horrific the consequences. It cannot be right to imprison someone who has shown no criminal intent and who may have been unaware of his carelessness.
The hon. Member for Northampton, North spoke about wrecking amendments and what our colleagues in the House of Lords have done. We believe that it is profoundly wrong that someone should lose his liberty for carelessness when there was absolutely no intent. For dangerous driving, which I shall come to, there is a clear framework of criteria to which the courts can refer, but there is none for this offence. In such circumstances, there will be no grounds for a defence. No one goes out with the intention of being careless, or of being blinded around a corner, which I mentioned earlier. I do not see a defence.

Stephen Ladyman: Can I just nip in the bud this business of people being temporarily blinded by sunlight? If one is temporarily blinded by sunlight, whether it is referred to as an act of God, an accident or fate, it is not carelessness. One would not be convicted under such circumstances. However, there is a clear  difference between that and someone being blinded by fog but not moderating their speed. They might be driving at the speed limit, but it would be inappropriate in foggy conditions. Does the hon. Gentleman not see the difference between the carelessness in one case and the act of God in the other?

Owen Paterson: That was a genuinely helpful intervention from the Minister, as that is exactly what our amendment and new clauses are framed to address. We want to try to establish criteria. Much of this is subjective, but I totally agree that we must try to tie down the circumstances. The case that the Minister cited of someone being stupid enough to carry on driving too fast in fog would be caught by our new definition of dangerous or reckless. If I can make a little more progress, I might be able to explain that.
We are fundamentally opposed to imprisonment for carelessness. The point was most eloquently and clearly explained by my noble and learned Friend Lord Lyell of Markyate, who has been a Solicitor-General, an Attorney-General and a lawyer. It is well worth reading his speech on Third Reading in the other place on 10 January. He reinforced the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), who is the shadow Attorney-General.
My hon. Friend spoke on this issue in the obscurity of the Standing Committee on the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill on 20 January 2005. I believe that that was one of the first occasions on which the issue arose as a proposal in law. The hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) proposed an amendment that there should be an offence of causing death or serious injury by negligent driving, which would have a 10-year sentence. My hon. Friend spoke clearly and made our point in a way that expresses our opposition in principle. It is worth quoting his comments in full. He stated:
“I understand the upset of those who have lost relatives or loved ones in a road accident. Of course there may be circumstances in which the road accident that occurred was due to what, in the old days, we would have called a person’s ‘recklessness’ or the person driving dangerously, which implies that there was an element of serious culpability in their conduct because they should have been aware that what they were doing was dangerous. In those circumstances, I have always been of the view that the courts should, if necessary, punish people severely for their actions.
However, I was slightly shocked to hear the words of the hon. and learned Lady. She desires not only to criminalise negligence but to criminalise it with sanctions that are potentially extremely severe. She explained that negligence could amount to nothing more than momentary inadvertence. It is for good reason that the law has made no distinction between the penalty that it imposes on a driver for momentary inadvertence if there is no injury to somebody else and the penalty it imposes if there is death or even multiple death. The culpability lies in the behaviour and, as the culpability is a negligent culpability, without any intention, it is wrong—in my view, profoundly wrong—to impose a further sanction to mark public disapproval because of the consequence.”—[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 20d¤January 2005; c. 450.]

Alistair Carmichael: The hon. Gentleman said at the outset that his opposition was in principle, which is a perfectly proper position to take. However, Parliament crossed the Rubicon when it made careless driving a criminal offence, because carelessness was  criminalised. That was the point of principle. The question whether a custodial, non-custodial or financial penalty should be consequent to that carelessness is not a point of principle.

Owen Paterson: I am not sure that I agree with that.

Alistair Carmichael: I can put it much more simply. What is the difference in principle between punishing with a fine and punishing with a custodial sentence?

Owen Paterson: It is simple: loss of liberty. We are not convinced that it is right to lose one’s liberty for a moment of inadvertence. I should like to make a little further progress. We shall come up with a framework of contiguous offences, which would cover a lot of the concerns of the hon. Member for Northampton, North and be a better framework.

Sally Keeble: Can we get away from the idea that carelessness must be a momentary lapse? Let us go back to the bouncer. One of the arguments was that, because he knew about fighting and physical control, he exercised a lack of care in the degree of force that he used. Carelessness is not just about a momentary lapse. It is a much more fundamental lack of care.

Owen Paterson: We agree with that. We think that that should come under the criteria for dangerous driving. The Minister cited the example of the person who drives fast in fog when it is sensible to slow down. We think that that could come under the criteria. That is not carelessness; that is showing deliberate intent and ignoring road conditions.

Sally Keeble: Let me give the hon. Gentleman a further example of people being convicted of failing to fulfil their duty of care. In a group of drug addicts, if one person takes an overdose, the others, who have failed to protect him, might then be convicted as a result of that failure to exercise a duty of care to look after somebody in difficulties. It is a much more fundamental issue.

Owen Paterson: Yes, but that gets us back to the question of intent. As the Committee shall see, the Conservatives have a framework—a list of criteria—by which one will be able to judge actions on the road such as driving in fog. We think that it is wrong in principle to go to prison for a moment of carelessness in which there was absolutely no intent.

Alistair Carmichael: On the question of carelessness, is it not the point that Parliament must trust the courts? The custodial sentence set out in the provisions would be an inappropriate sentence for a moment of carelessness, but even if it were imposed, it would almost certainly be overturned.

Owen Paterson: We are proposing a custodial sentence for various criteria of dangerous driving, and I shall come to that in a second. I do not agree with the hon. Lady or the hon. Gentleman. We have a profound feeling on the matter. Our amendments are not wrecking amendments; they have been carefully  thought through, and very experienced senior lawyers in the other place have gone through them in some depth.
The other point on which I disagree with the hon. Lady is the question of the consequences of the offence. A moment of carelessness could lead to a car striking a human being at 30 or 40 mph. If that human being is a fit, healthy middle-aged man in London, there might be doctors or nurses on the pavement, or someone with knowledge of first aid. A lot of people would be around. There is a chance that someone would use a mobile phone quickly, and in inner-city areas there is a strong chance that an ambulance would arrive quickly. We are looking at a hospital through the window. Accident and emergency is readily available.
The fit young man struck in London has a strong chance of surviving, purely because of the circumstances. In a rural area, a lady in her 80s hit at 35 or 40 mph following exactly the same moment of carelessness and with exactly the same impact—the Minister gave us figures on kinetic energy—might not survive, because not so many people would be around. There might not be a doctor or nurse in the village, or anyone with a mobile phone. In fairness to the ambulance services there, their minimum times are much longer, for obvious reasons, and the A and E department might well be half an hour away. Exactly the same element of carelessness causing exactly the same amount of energy to strike a human being would lead to a death in the rural area. It seems wrong to me that that would trigger clause 20 in the rural area, but not in the city. That is a serious practical problem with the clause and it is a good reason to oppose it.
Our second practical objection is because of the serious opposition in the legal profession. I stress that I am not a lawyer, but those professionals have to live with the laws that we pass and try to make them work. My noble and learned Friend, Lord Lyell, drew attention to a pamphlet put out by Justice and the vigorous opposition of the Council of Circuit Judges. Tellingly, he drew attention to the opinion of the Justices’ Clerks Society, which hears each case. It was unable to cite one case when it considered that a custodial sentence was appropriate.
Our last practical objection to the provision is that we fear that juries simply will not convict under the clause. A leading legal expert at Warwick university, Roger Leng, said:
“Typically when a jury is presented with a motoring offender they will be saying to themselves ‘I am not a perfect driver. I make mistakes.’ I think it will be easy for the defence lawyer to put that to them and invite the jury to be sympathetic.”
Juries might think, “There but for the grace of God go I. It could have been me who turned that corner. I just did not see the bicycle and the man wearing brown clothes against the brown hedge. It could have been me who turned into the street and didn’t see the cyclist behind the lamp post.” It is no good our passing unworkable laws in our ivory tower if juries will not make them stick. We will be in a worse position than we were before.
I have discussed the whole issue in depth with my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell, the shadow Secretary of State for Transport, and my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, the shadow Attorney-General. We recognise fully that there is a problem to be addressed, but amendment No. 63, with new clauses 8 and 9, would present a more just framework of laws. They are all of a piece. The hon. Member for Northampton, North picked out one amendment; it would be helpful if she addressed our three amendments to create a scale coming down from manslaughter.
It is worth considering the current definition of dangerous. According to “Archbold”, a person drives dangerously when the
“way he drives falls far below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver”
and when it
“would be obvious to a competent and careful driver that driving in that way would be dangerous”.
Everyone knows of anecdotal cases. They might know of the horror of relatives. It is well worth considering such cases in the light of legal definitions that might support an allegation of dangerous driving. The hon. Lady cited a couple of cases in Northamptonshire.
Our proposals should be judged on the basis of a list, because they would deal with our new offence of reckless and our changed offence of dangerous. The list sets out racing or competitive driving; speed that is highly inappropriate for the prevailing road or traffic conditions; aggressive driving, such as sudden lane changes, cutting into a line of vehicles or driving much too close to the vehicle in front; disregard of traffic lights and other road signs, which, on an objective analysis, would appear to be deliberate, or disregard of warnings from fellow passengers; overtaking that could not have been carried out safely; driving a vehicle with a load that presents a danger to other road users; driving when suffering from impaired ability, such as having an arm or leg in plaster or impaired eyesight; driving when too tired to stay awake; driving with actual knowledge of a dangerous defect on a vehicle; and using a mobile phone as a telephone or to compose or read text messages.
In light of that framework, our solution in new clause 8 is to create an offence of causing death by reckless driving, and proposed subsection (2) defines that. We propose a maximum 14-year sentence of imprisonment. Our thinking on the term “reckless” is coloured by a judgment in the Scottish courts in 1980, when it was defined as follows:
“Judges and juries will readily understand ... that before they can apply the adverb ’recklessly’ to the driving in question they must find that it fell far below the standard of driving expected of the competent and careful driver and that it occurred either in the face of obvious and material dangers which were or should have been observed, appreciated and guarded against, or in circumstances which showed a complete disregard for any potential dangers which might result from the way in which the vehicle was being driven.”
We then propose, in new clause 9, to amend the current dangerous driving legislation—I have listed the criteria for that. The new clause would delete “far” and insert “significantly”, which would address the problem about which Opposition Members on the  Committee are deeply concerned. Anecdotes have been cited; the Minister quoted the case of driving in fog. The words “significantly below” would give courts a better framework against which to judge such cases.
On principle, we do not think it right to provide for imprisonment for careless driving, and amendment No. 63 would therefore delete
“5 years or a fine or both”
and insert “a fine”. If the Committee agreed to the new clauses and our amendment we would have a clear framework: manslaughter, offering life; reckless driving, offering 14 years; death by dangerous driving, using the words “significantly below”, offering seven years; and we would keep the offence of death by careless driving but without a custodial sentence. The offences would be contiguous and provide a scale that would give our courts a better framework within which to judge the contentious cases that cause so much grief.
I shall touch finally on new clause 24. The hon. Member for Northampton, North said that we talk tough but are not acting tough. Cases have been brought to our attention in which police officers have asked drivers to stop, and the drivers have driven away dangerously. New clause 24 would create an offence of dangerous driving after failing to stop, and would give the court the option of two years’ imprisonment on summary conviction or five years on indictment.

Rosemary McKenna: The fact that so many Members want to contribute to this debate shows how important the clause is. I welcome the Bill; I have followed its passage and I hope that we will get a landmark piece of legislation on road safety.
Will my hon. Friend the Minister explain the difference between the custodial sentence recommended for Scotland and that recommended for England and Wales? I am sure that he will do so in his response to the debate.
I disagree profoundly with the hon. Member for North Shropshire. A custodial sentence for careless driving absolutely must be in the legislation, principally but not only because the current situation causes so much grief to bereaved families, who believe that the process adds to their pain. I associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North and the important point made by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. Careless driving is already an offence. We are discussing the sentencing policy for that offence.
In April 1999, I secured an Adjournment debate in the House on road death charging policy. Since I was elected in 1997, I have been involved in that issue. On 18 September 1998, Steven Dekker, my constituent and near neighbour, celebrated his 24th birthday with his family and Gail, his girlfriend of six years. On Saturday 19 September, Gail and Steven spent the day together in Glasgow, shopping, enjoying being together and planning their future. At 6 pm, on a bright, clear evening, as they drove home to Cumbernauld, a van being driven the wrong way down a single carriageway, hit them head on, killing Steven and injuring Gail.
The collision occurred as Steven came round a bend on a one-way single carriageway, with no chance of taking avoiding action. Of course, the family and the local community were devastated, but the legal process actually added to their pain. The Crown Office decided to prosecute Andrew Wilson, the man who killed Steven Dekker, not with death by dangerous driving, but with the lesser charge of careless driving. The proceedings in court lasted 15 minutes, and Andrew Wilson was fined £750 and banned from driving for one year. Since that day, the family have pursued the case positively, with Mrs. Dekker now playing a major role in road safety organisations.
At that time, the thrust of my argument was that the charge of careless driving was wrong, and about charging policy in general. The police prepared a charge of dangerous driving, but that was downgraded to careless driving by the procurator fiscal’s office. The clause changes that argument, and we heard last week’s discussions on the matter.
Today, I spoke to Margaret Dekker, who was, of course, following the passage of the Bill. She believes that the Government have got it just about right, and that a custodial sentence is crucial. She has welcomed the whole process of the Bill, and asked that we congratulate the Minister, because the process of creating the Bill, including consultation, has been done properly. All of that has made road safety organisations feel that their work over many years particularly in relation to custodial sentencing has been heard. Those points have been made continually by RoadPeace campaigners and not just in relation to one or two high-profile cases.
On behalf of SCID—the Scottish campaign against irresponsible drivers, which supports victims of road crashes, Mrs. Dekker wrote:
“The maximum penalties proposed by the Government are five years for both of these offences. The present lack of such offences and the limited sentencing power of the courts are causing an aggravated grief for bereaved families and a resulting lack of confidence in the criminal justice system they look to for support ... The present maximum penalty available to the courts for ‘Careless driving’ is £2,500 fine, a discretionary disqualification and 3-9 penalty points. While sentencing is always a matter for the judge/sheriff based on the available evidence, we would envisage the proposed maximum penalty of 5 years, proposed in the Bill, would bridge the much needed sentencing gap between “dangerous” and “careless” and would give the judge/sheriff the scope to reflect the gravity of the carelessness.”
The hon. Member for North Shropshire has argued that carelessness should not be punished by a custodial sentence, but problems arise when the charging authorities decide whether to make the charge careless driving or dangerous driving. That is when it is important that both charges carry a custodial sentence.

Owen Paterson: I am listening carefully to what the hon. Lady is saying. I repeat that it is dangerous to get into individual cases. We are not aware of the circumstances, although I am sure that she knows far more details of the case than I do. Does she not agree  with our new offence of dangerous driving, which would be defined as driving that falls significantly below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver, and which would be obviously dangerous to a competent and careful driver? I gave examples of driving that might support an allegation of dangerous driving. I would have thought that this case, which involved inappropriate speed, aggressive driving such as sudden lane changes and disregard of traffic lights and road signs, would be satisfactorily caught by our proposed offence of dangerous driving “significantly below”.

Rosemary McKenna: The hon. Gentleman may well be right, but all those circumstances applied and the driver could have been charged with dangerous driving at the time. Indeed, the police prepared the charge of dangerous driving, but it was dropped to careless driving by the procurators fiscal.

Owen Paterson: That was under the current dangerous driving offence, which is “far below”. We are proposing “significantly below”.

Rosemary McKenna: We are splitting hairs. What is absolutely important is that there is an opportunity to charge with causing death, whether by careless driving or dangerous driving. I do not subscribe to the idea that a moment’s carelessness should be disregarded, but this case did not involve a moment’s carelessness—it involved significantly bad driving. It is absolutely crucial that the sheriff or magistrate of whichever court is involved has the right to apply any of those options when sentencing.

Brian Iddon: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the problems with what the hon. Member for North Shropshire proposes is that the more words we introduce into the law, the more the defence solicitors and lawyers will use them to get their clients off, and that what we really need is simplicity in the law? The problem with the Opposition’s proposals is that they complicate the law.

Rosemary McKenna: I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. That is exactly what happened in this case. The accused agreed to plea bargain, which is what happens frequently when lawyers are involved. They persuade their client to plea bargain to a reduced charge. At that time, the reduced charge did not have a custodial sentence. Therefore, not only was there no trial to give the family their day in court and to put all the details into the public domain, but the sentence that was available was insignificant and caused a massive amount of pain to the family.

Owen Paterson: It is important to get this right. The statement of the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East that we are adding more words is incorrect. [Hon. Members: “Significantly.”] We are changing “far” to “significantly”. I listed the criteria for different types of bad driving. In the case that the hon. Lady cited, the prosecutors and the court would have powers to go to seven years in passing sentence.

Rosemary McKenna: I believe that the addition of the word would give lawyers the right to drive a coach and horses through the legislation.

Stephen Ladyman: Carelessly drive them.

Rosemary McKenna: Yes—and that is exactly the point that we are trying to make. There must be the right to give a custodial sentence in such cases, and for the courts to be able to apply the appropriate sentence. It is stated in the North report, for example, that
“we find the concept of a road traffic offence in which the sentencing court is obliged to disregard the fact that a death has occurred as wholly anomalous.”
That opinion is repeated regularly throughout all thed¤background information that RoadPeace campaigners have given us.
I shall move on to my last point, which I hope the Minister will deal with when he responds. SCID asked me to raise one other issue with him. It relates to a case that Mrs. Melnik recently attended to support another family, a member of which had been seriously injured in a road traffic accident. Although the person did not die, they suffered serious head injuries, and family members felt that they had lost that person as a result. Will the Minister take that issue into account both now and during later stages in our consideration of the Bill? With that, I congratulate him on the legislation and hope that proceedings on it reach a speedy conclusion.

Lee Scott: I start by referring to the anecdote told by the hon. Member for Northampton, North, because I have read of similar occurrences and experiences and heard of them in my constituency. In those cases, custodial sentences were indeed passed in exactly the circumstances that the hon. Lady mentioned, so there are obviously inadequacies with the prosecutions and sentences.
Let me move on, however, to careless driving and dangerous driving. Earlier, the Opposition were accused of talking tough, but not acting on that. However, there is a difference between talking tough and talking fairly and then acting on that. The provisions tabled by my hon. Friends cover the cases that we are discussing. The list that was read out covered people on mobile phones, knowledge of defects in cars, driving at too high a speed, cars racing each other, aggressive driving, people jumping lights, overtaking, somebody being too tired and cases such as that mentioned by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna) in which, I am amazed to say, the person involved was not prosecuted for dangerous driving, but got off with just a fine. Under our proposals, all those offences would be covered by “reckless”.

Henry Bellingham: The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East described that case in great detail, and we would all feel huge sympathy for the victims of that appalling piece of driving. However, if the procurator fiscal decided not to go for causing death by dangerous driving in such a case, our new clause on causing death by  reckless driving would surely be the obvious choice, and the person involved would have had a custodial sentence.

Lee Scott: My hon. Friend is perfectly right. The new clause proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire would cover that.
Let me return to some of the problems with causing death by careless driving. I want to talk not about examples relating to whether the sun got in somebody’s eyes, but about somebody who might do thousands of miles. Many years ago, I was on the road as a rep and I did thousands of miles. Did I ever drive carelessly? Probably, but I was fortunate never to be involved in a serious accident. However, I could have been involved in an accident and I could have been prosecuted and gone to jail. What would have happened if I could not prove that the sun had shone in my eyes? Where is the division? Where does it come in when we have a prosecution and a custodial sentence? Tragically, one party might be deceased by then; indeed, that is why the case would be brought. If no one was in the other party’s car, we would have only their word. Surely, the reckless driving offence would cover such cases in a much fairer and greater way.

Sally Keeble: The hon. Gentleman talks about reckless driving as if it were the same as careless driving. However, the Opposition proposals would change the threshold for causing death by dangerous driving—a crime that the courts understand and use—and introduce a new offence of causing death by reckless driving, with the higher threshold that currently relates to dangerous driving. The case that he mentions does not relate to the lesser offence. If it involves reckless driving, as he says it does, the threshold would be much higher than for causing death by dangerous driving—that is the effect of the Opposition amendments, which is why they are so wrong.

Lee Scott: I am sure that the hon. Lady would not expect me to agree and I do not. The fairest way forward is for any family that has been tragically affected and which wants justice to have justice, and none of my hon. Friends would disagree with that. The vital question, however, is how that justice is obtained.

David Kidney: My concern is to address the present cliff face in the law between somebody who causes a death and is convicted of dangerous driving, and somebody who causes a death whose driving the court decides is not dangerous, so can convict only for careless driving and simply award a fine. The hon. Member for North Shropshire says that he does not get involved in individual cases, which I understand, but as someone who has taken an interest in road safety for a long time, I know that from time to time bereaved relatives will say that a family member was killed, the driving seemed to them very dangerous, but the court did not convict for dangerous driving and all that was passed was a fine. They ask, “How derisory is that? How can you put a fine of £1,000 on my family member’s death?” That is what I seek to address by putting my name to amendment No.1.
It would be wrong to say that the law does not have regard to the effects of a person’s behaviour. The law on assault lists different kinds of assault, depending on the effect of the person’s guilty behaviour. For example, at one end there is common assault, then actual bodily harm, then grievous bodily harm and then malicious wounding, right up to attempted murder. Therefore, the law clearly already has regard to the consequences of a person’s actions. The official Opposition are saying that in this case they do not like the amount of guilty intent that is needed to make available to a court the option of sending a person to prison.
There is a helpful written answer to a question, tellingly from the hon. Member for Wellingborough, in which the Solicitor-General explains the present law as regards what needs to be proved. For dangerous driving the prosecution must show that
“the driving fell far below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver and it would be obvious to a competent and careful driver that driving in that way was dangerous. To prove careless driving it is necessary for the prosecution to establish that the driving fell below that of a reasonable, prudent and competent driver.—[Official Report, 20 March 2006; c. 74W.]
Therefore, for both offences the driving is below what is expected of normal, competent, careful drivers. It is below the standard for careless driving and far below for dangerous driving.
I agree with the hon. Member for North Shropshire that the Government’s consultation document, a good document that fairly set out the difficulties and complexities of this area of law, considered the alternative option of a new standard in addition to those two. It suggested that there could be “below the normal standard”, “far below the normal standard” and “even further below the normal standard”. The official Opposition’s proposal today does not go down that road, but asks whether we can squeeze in another standard between “below” and “far below”. I believe that that is dangerous, because it would end up merging with what we have already. “Reckless” and “dangerous” would then become the same offence, andd¤courts would apply them in the same way, and someone who cannot be convicted of those offences would still be convicted of careless driving with nothing more available to the court than the sentence of a fine. That is indeed the official Opposition’s intention.
I do not agree that the public would find what I am proposing offensive. The hon. Member for Wellingborough explained in his Second Reading speech the wide consultation that he carried out in his constituency, when he found strong support for the course of action proposed in the amendment, which was also proposed by the Government in the original Bill introduced in the House of Lords. From many years of meeting members of the public and talking about road safety issues, I believe that his experience in Wellingborough is reflected around the country.
To introduce a maximum sentence of imprisonment for causing death by careless driving is not the same as establishing a law that anybody who kills while driving  must go to prison. We are not saying that. We are addressing the cliff face of a driver’s behaviour that has fallen below the standard that we expect from a normal driver. How far below has it fallen? How bad has the driving been? If it is not bad enough to be caught by an offence of dangerous driving, is it nevertheless bad enough to deserve a serious sentence if somebody is killed? If the sentence is serious, it could be imprisonment.
Let us not overlook the fact that there is no ability in the Bill as drafted for a magistrates court to say, “This is worse than something that requires a fine, but not as bad as something that requires prison. We’d quite like to make this person do some community work as punishment.” The Bill as drafted does not permit that. We need to change the law to give the magistrates the ability to judge how bad the driving was that caused the death and then to decide whether the right sentence is a fine, community punishment or imprisonment, suspended or otherwise. I am asking the Committee to agree to give the courts that range of sentencing powers.

Greg Knight: On sentencing, the hon. Gentleman is latterly making a point with which I have some sympathy, but is not the problem that the magistrates can consider that community order only as an alternative to imprisonment? If they do not have the power to impose imprisonment, they cannot issue such an order. That is a problem not only in relation to motoring, but across the range of sentencing. If a change is to be made, is there therefore not a case for making it in respect of every offence that is dealt with by the magistrates court?

David Kidney: The right hon. Gentleman is quite right. The magistrates have to be able to say, “This is serious enough for prison, but on this occasion we will impose a community punishment instead”. If we wanted to undo that state of law, we would need to address the many Criminal Justice Acts that exist. However, to reassure him that it he is better off supporting our amendment than his party’s amendment, we could bring to our aid the Sentencing Guidelines Council, which was established by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. We could rely on the council to give guidance to magistrates courts on exercising their power, which will range from a fine through to imprisonment. I urge the Committee to agree to that range of penalties.

Henry Bellingham: The debate concerns some difficult circumstances and creates quite a lot of emotion, so it is best approached in as bipartisan a way as possible. We all agree that the current law is not satisfactory and there is no question but that the Government are making a brave and honourable attempt to improve it.
My Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire, takes the view that we should not get too immersed in individual cases. However, it is perhaps through such cases that we become most informed and our own lives are touched. I told the Committee last week about a tragedy that my family suffered. My late stepfather, a very good driver  who happened to be a racing driver in his younger days and a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, was killed on the A1 by a lorry that left its tail in the fast lane. He was driving at 65 mph on a section of road that was unlit. The driver of the lorry pleaded guilty to careless driving and received, I think, a fine of £50.
One can imagine the view of my family. We felt very strongly indeed that that lorry driver deserved a tougher sentence, because what he was doing was certainly not careless, but manifestly reckless. He could easily have turned left on the A1 at that junction and gone round a roundabout, which would have taken probably another two minutes of his time. All those dual carriageways have now been made a good deal safer, as the Minister will know, and I applaud the Government for the campaign to improve safety on dual carriageways in this country.
We all know of constituency cases, and I should like to cite one. I mentioned earlier the case of the travelling salesman who knocked someone off their motorcycle. There was a momentary lapse of concentration and the motorcyclist was in a blind spot, although it was right that that travelling salesman did not go to prison. On the other hand, there was another case in my constituency involving a young lad called Adam Wall, who actually lived in the constituency of my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Fraser). Adam’s mother, Bridget Wall, has been an active campaign member of RoadPeace.
In that tragic case, her son was on a motorcycle driving east along the A47, just outside Wisbech, at night and minding his own business, when a van pulled out recklessly—possibly even dangerously—and knocked the young lad off his motorcycle, killing him instantly. The family, naturally enough, were appalled when the van driver was convicted of careless driving and given a minor fine with no lengthy period of disqualification and no community service.
On the other side of the coin, I can cite the example of a constituent who was involved in a fatality. He admits that he had a moment of road rage and raced another car. The car that was crashed into involved a fatality, and both drivers who were racing served a custodial sentence. That must be right; it was an aggravated incident.
There was another example on a road in my constituency recently. A company rep was driving in wet conditions on a new, fast stretch of road around a village called Narborough. A platoon of traffic had bunched up, and he pulled out to overtake a lorry, not knowing that there was a car in front of it which was going too slow for the conditions. The lorry was too close to the car, and the company rep slammed on his brakes and lost control. He was done for careless driving, but I do not believe that he was disqualified. Should he have been? I do not know.
The law is inadequate, and the Government are making an honourable attempt to improve it. When the Bill leaves Committee, having put the argument and pushed it to a vote, we may have to accept defeat. However, my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire, the official Opposition, a large number of  MPs and people with a great deal of experience have put a great deal of effort, time and thought into the matter. We have not said to Her Majesty’s Government, “Look, you’ve got this wrong. Sorry, we’re going to vote against it.”
We have come up with alternative proposals. They represent an imaginative, genuine and inspired attempt to improve the law in such a way that falls short of what the Government have done, but avoids the trap—the law of unintended consequences—into which people who drive many miles, such as the travelling salesman, the company rep, people such as my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Scott) in another incarnation will fall. All of us have at times had a momentary lapse in concentration. No one can put their hand on their heart and say that every day of their lives, they have driven and not made some small indiscretion. Thank the Lord, in 99.9 per cent. of those cases, there has not been a fatality—there has not even been an accident.
In a detailed and well researched speech, my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire put forward to the Government an alternative that shows ingenuity and imagination. The Government have put a lot of work and effort into the legislation, and the law will be improved, but there is a danger that some people will suffer a custodial sentence that Parliament did not intend. The Minister will say that the court will always have discretion and that it will not have to impose a custodial sentence, but I fear that mistakes will be made. The silver lining on that cloud is that we shall end up with a better law than the current law.

Brian Iddon: The problem here is quite simple and I do not want to complicate the issue by taking on board the amendment proposed by the Opposition. We have a threshold definition that is difficult enough for the Crown Prosecution Service and the police to interpret, with dangerous driving at the top end of the scale and careless driving at the bottom.
As I pointed out on Second Reading, it would be hard to find another Member of Parliament who has had more related fatalities in their constituency than myself, in the densely populated urban area that I represent. I read out all of the cases there have been in the past few years, some of which were very serious. They have involved me in a lot of discussions with the police and different branches of the CPS. I have tried to see the situation from the police’s point of view when they make the charge, and that of the CPS when they take it to court. On many occasions the CPS, against the police’s wishes in a majority of cases, change the charge that is prosecuted in court.
The difficulty that the police and the CPS are in is this: if they have a case where there has been a fatality that is close to the threshold, which side of the threshold do they prosecute on? The police and CPS will say that in order to bring justice to the families who have lost loved ones, relatives and friends, they have to prosecute above the threshold and go for death by dangerous driving. They will also say that they lose so many cases by doing that that they are entirely  frustrated. Of course, when they lose such cases, the families involved are extremely aggrieved and feel that they have not got justice.
On the other hand, the police and the CPS could play it cautious. After looking at the past cases and precedents, they may feel that they will not achieve a result above the threshold, so they go for a charge of careless driving. And my goodness, that greatly aggrieves the families who have lost loved ones in fatal accidents. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford has pointed out, the problem is that there is a huge gap that has to be dealt with by the families who have suffered from fatalities, and by the Crown Prosecution Service and police. It is extremely difficult to decide whether to prosecute above the threshold or below. They cannot win in many of these cases.
The amendment that has been accepted and the one we are discussing at the moment will give the police and CPS a new charge and penalty to plug this huge chasm between the upper and lower charge, which will bring justice, and it will be seen to be done by the families who have suffered fatalities. Although lawyers are against it because they believe that it will make accidental conduct seriously criminal and worthy of imprisonment, the sort of cases that will be prosecuted under the new charge by this new penalty are not those where people have been blinded by sunlight. They are serious events where we would like a charge of death by dangerous driving, but the evidence is not there. They are not minor offences, but very serious ones.
Although the lawyers do not like it, as I put on record on Second Reading, the CPS has clearly said that
“The new offence will be valuable in bridging the existing gap between causing death by dangerous driving and careless driving. In the most difficult cases that fall very close to the line dividing these two offences, it will enable prosecutors to place both offences on the indictment, thus allowing the jury to make their assessments of the facts.”
That is what we are trying to do, and I do not want to complicate matters by changing the law in the way proposed by Opposition Members because in my experience when there is a substantial—not significant—change in the law, it takes the courts years to bed it down and to learn how to interpret the change through taking cases through the court. The change of law that we have suggested is far simpler and easier to interpret for the Crown Prosecution Service, judges and juries who have to deal with it in the courts than that proposed in the Opposition amendment.

Paul Rowen: The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East speaks persuasively and eloquently about the issues and problems associated with the existing law. I agree that the official Opposition’s amendment is extremely complicated. We are not convinced that it would bring about the sort of change that hon. Members on all sides would wish to see. My problem with the Government’s proposal—it was raised on Second Reading and in another place—is with what is meant by careless  driving. The official Opposition keep referring to a moment of madness, or a sudden blinding light. I should like to see—either in the explanatory notes or in the Bill—some explanation of the categories that will be covered by careless driving. There is a wealth of difference between the categories mentioned in the amendment that would extend dangerous driving and somebody being blinded by sunlight. If we are to give custodial sentences, we need to be clear about what will be covered by those categories. I shall be grateful if the Minister enlightened us.

Alistair Carmichael: My apologies, Mrs. Anderson, for having been absent for much of the debate. I was here for the earlier speeches and I shall not detain the Committee for long.
The crux of the difficulty with which the Committee grapples is the distinction between carelessness—subsection (3) is worded in such terms—and the dangerous driving covered in subsections (1) and (2). When the hon. Member for North Shropshire introduced his amendments, he gave us the 1980 definition of recklessness from, I think, the Allan case. Of course, 1980 predates the 1988 Act, which we are seeking to amend. At that stage, a definition was needed because the offence was causing death by reckless driving. Parliament, in its wisdom, sought to change that in 1988, so we got dangerous driving and careless or inconsiderate driving. Thereafter—in 1992 or thereabouts—an additional definition was added in a further amendment to the Road Traffic Act 1988.
The time has surely come to consider not just whether it is appropriate to create an offence of causing death by careless driving but whether the operation of the distinction between careless and inconsiderate driving on the one hand and dangerous driving on the other has worked as well as we might think it has done. The fact that we are engaged in this debate suggests to me that it might not have done. It is 18 years since we passed the 1988 Act, so it might be time to undertake a proper and comprehensive examination of the whole body of road traffic legislation rather than doing it in the piecemeal and unsatisfactory way that we seek to do today.
At the conclusion of such an exercise we might well go back to something more akin to recklessness than to dangerousness and carelessness. However, let us not forget that we abandoned reckless driving for a reason—the significant problems attached to getting convictions for recklessness. That was why, in order to get some clarity at the lower end of the scale, carelessness and inconsiderate driving were introduced.
I accept that a vast range of driving can come under the term careless or inconsiderate driving. If one considers that one goes from court to court and from judge to judge, there is always going to be a degree of overlap. What is at the bottom end of dangerous driving might, in another court, be at the top end of careless driving.
The proposals of the hon. Member for North Shropshire are interesting, because he seeks to give a list of all the things that would constitute dangerous driving, with everything else being careless, or  reckless—whatever the term may be. The difficulty that I have with that, which is born of my occupational experience of prosecuting and defending in court, is that every time one perfects that list of things that are covered by certain conduct, somebody out in the world finds a new way of committing the same offence in a way that is not already covered by the list. That is why, of necessity, the definitions in an Act such as this will be exceptionally broad.
It is because the Government have chosen to proceed as they have that I retain a number of reservations about the form of the proposals before the House—reservations that have been expressed by my noble Friends in the other place. The crux of those reservations is in trying to read across the wording in section 3—careless and inconsiderate driving—into the new offence of causing death by careless and inconsiderate driving.
I have no difficulty in envisaging a custodial sentence being available to the courts for cases when the conduct is less than dangerous, but is right at the top end of carelessness. The hon. Member for Northampton, North used, I think, the term “grossly careless”. If that is not covered by dangerous driving then, yes, gross carelessness should be something for which a custodial sentence should be available. The difficulty is that the Bill goes wider than that, because it refers to causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving. Everyone accepts that inconsiderate driving is of lesser standard of seriousness than careless driving, and I have a real problem with custodial sentences being available for inconsiderate driving.
So I have a lot of sympathy with what the Government have done, and with the views held by the hon. Member for Northampton, North. Nevertheless, the House needs to do rather more careful work before the provisions go on to the statute book.

Sally Keeble: I should like to clarify that when I referred to gross carelessness, I was not referring to what is in the Bill. I was talking about our common-sense understanding that there are different types of carelessness, and about how that is translated into legislation.

Alistair Carmichael: The difficulty is that when one speaks of gross carelessness and degrees of carelessness, the lawyers start to get interested. They start to ask whether gross carelessness is something beyond what is required for carelessness—is it dangerous or is it something that, because it is carelessness, is already covered by the clause?

Brian Iddon: I should like to remind the Committee of the case to which my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Kitty Ussher) referred on Second Reading, a case that received widespread publicity in all the national media. The case was that of three-year-old Levi Bleasdale, who was struck by a hit-and-run driver last year. The gentleman was charged with careless driving.
Not only the family of Levi Bleasdale, but the whole country, felt that that driver should have had a custodial sentence. That is exactly what we are trying to introduce, and we should remember families like  Levi Bleasdale’s. We are not dealing with cases of blinding by sunlight; we are dealing with cases like Levi Bleasdale’s.

Alistair Carmichael: I am grateful for that intervention. A custodial sentence would, of course, be available in that situation, because failing to stop at the scene of an accident and thereafter failing to report it to the police are both species of criminal offence under the Road Traffic Act 1988 for which custodial sentences are already available and frequently applied.
It is important in dealing with such a case not to let the understandable emotion involved blind us to the fact that other provisions in the Road Traffic Act and common law would impose custodial sentences if they were properly imposed and dealt with.
I have a lot of sympathy with what the Government seek to do. However, I am not entirely in accordance with their views on how it should be done. More work is required and I hope that at some stage in the near future we will have a full and proper objective assessment of the law, perhaps by the Law Commission, that will allow a proper reworking of the Act. It is now almost 20 years old; the last Road Traffic Act to be revisited was 26 years old. We are approaching that threshold. As others have said, if we are to make changes it is important that they are workable. What we have at the moment is just short of that.

Stephen Hammond: I apologise for not being in Committee for much of the debate this morning. I was delayed on unavoidable constituency business.
I support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire. As I understand it, the purpose of the amendment is to seek appropriate punishment for those who cause death on our roads by driving below recognised standards of competence. We support the trickle-down, so that if they are not found guilty of a more serious offence they can be found guilty of a lesser offence.
I have reservations about the clause and whether it is the way to proceed. I am concerned at the attempt to impose a five-year, or indeed any, custodial sentence for the offence of careless driving. I hear what the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East has said, but the representations made to us have shown little support for the clause from the legal profession or the judiciary. The provision has arisen because the CPS has failed to prosecute many drivers for what they should be prosecuted for, namely the offence of dangerous driving, and because of the “there but for the grace of God go I” attitude of a number of juries.
The Levi Bleasdale case, which the hon. Gentleman rightly cited and which horrified many, ought to have been prosecuted for what it was: dangerous driving. The criminal may have been caught by hit and run, but he ought to have been prosecuted for dangerous driving. That has been a real problem and I am not convinced that the Government’s solution will get round it. Our amendment tries to ensure that we have a proper way to deal with drivers who have killed.
The clause is contrary to legal principle. Nowhere in English law is there a provision for a custodial sentence for an offence that does not go beyond carelessness. We provide custodial sentences for intent and civil redress for carelessness. The provision will undoubtedly cause a huge amount of injustice. I heard briefly what the hon. Member for Northampton, North said about the definition of gross carelessness and the graduating scale. The difficulty is the ability to differentiate.

Alistair Carmichael: The hon. Gentleman says that this is a novel principle in English law. He may well be right, but can one not receive a custodial sentence for breaches of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974? A breach of the requirement to maintain a safe system of work could be accidental.

Stephen Hammond: My understanding is that that requires deliberate neglect rather than carelessness; I am happy to be advised by the hon. Gentleman as a lawyer, which I am not, but I will certainly look into that.
The proper way to deal with drivers who have killed is surely for the CPS to be more careful about its charging level and to use the offences appropriate to the actions of the driver. That is the intention behind our amendments. By reintroducing the recklessness clause, we would set a higher test, specifying more closely and widening the definition of dangerous driving. That should enable the CPS to prosecute more correctly, and to resist the temptation to charge a person with the lowest offence possible in order to secure a conviction, and go for the offence for which they should be prosecuted.

Sally Keeble: The hon. Gentleman clearly thinks that to use the definitions “far below” and “below” is wrong, but he proposes to use “far below” and “significantly below”. Surely, there is a much bigger problem with those phrases.

Stephen Hammond: I think not. “Significantly below” clearly gives a much more measurable scope to the offence. We have tried to ensure that the CPS does not continually go for the lowest available option, and that it should prosecute for what it should prosecute, namely dangerous or reckless driving on the roads.
I want briefly to say a few words about new clause 24, which is partly a probing new clause, and which will, I suspect, be lost in much of what is said today. We proposed it in the hope that the Minister would consider bringing it forward at a later stage if we are unable to insert it into the Bill today. We have been asked to address this issue by a number of police officers who have experienced a particular problem in the daily execution of their duty. They ask the driver of a vehicle—be it a mechanically propelled vehicle, cycle or car—to stop, and the driver pretends to slow down but then rushes off dangerously, causing hazard to other road users. We want there to be a specific offence for failing to stop and then driving dangerously  in an attempt to get away. This issue is not as significant as others that we are discussing with this group of amendments, but I hope that the Minister will consider the matter and respond.

Stephen Ladyman: Confusing stuff; if members of the Committee are confused about this, they should wait until we get to furious driving.
I shall start with the question that is the simplest to resolve, which was put to me by my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East, who asked why the penalty will be only six months in Scotland, but 12 months in England and Wales. That is because in England, under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, we have raised the sentencing powers of magistrates’ courts from six months to 12, while in Scotland, sheriff courts can only impose sentences of up to six months. It is for Scottish Parliament to address the penalties available to the Scottish courts.
That brings us to the substantive debate. First, I acknowledge the constructive tone of hon. Members’ comments in disagreeing with the Government’s position, which was set out well by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North. My hon. Friends the Members for Stafford and for Bolton, South-East also made important contributions to the debate. All three of them have campaigned on this matter for a long time. I acknowledge their contributions to the debate.
This is a matter on which reasonable people can have reasonable disagreement. It is not a black and white issue, and I acknowledge the concerns of Opposition Members, and those that were raised in the House of Lords. However, with the greatest respect to the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, who said that he still has concerns about the Government’s position and that he wanted further work to be done, the Transport Committee has reported on the matter, and we have had a consultation called the “Review of Road Traffic Offences involving Bad Driving”. The benefit of being a Liberal Democrat is that they can always ask for more reports and do more work, but however many reviews and Select Committee reports there are, the Government sooner or later have to take a decision and act on it.

Greg Knight: For the first and perhaps the last time, I rise to defend the Liberal Democrat position. Some of what the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland had to say carried merit. Is this not one of those subjects on which we would have benefited from using the Special Standing Committee procedure, as it would have allowed us to call witnesses?

Stephen Ladyman: That might have been true if it was not for the fact that the Transport Select Committee presumably called witnesses, that it investigated the subject and made recommendations. I am a great fan of the Special Standing Committee procedure. Indeed, the hon. Member for North Shropshire and I were members of the first such Committee, which dealt with the Food Standards Agency. It was the first opportunity that I had to work with the hon. Gentleman, and I enjoyed it very much.
I agree that that procedure has a place, but we are now at the end of the process, following a long public review, the work of the Transport Select Committee and campaigns by many organisations. My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East mentioned SCID; and many others have been campaigning for a long time. Sooner or later, however, the Government have to take a decision, draw a line in the sand and say, “This is how we are going to change the law.” It has been acknowledged by all sides that there is a problem with the law as it stands. That is not debatable.
We are dealing with what my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton, South-East and for Stafford have called a cliff. That is exactly what it is; a huge cliff between the offences of dangerous and careless driving. The hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) said that not enough people have been prosecuted for dangerous driving. The problem is that it is very difficult to prove that someone is guilty of dangerous driving. If it cannot be proved, the only charge left is careless driving, and people associate that with low penalties.
We have been talking about what constitutes careless driving. The thrust of the Conservative amendments is to try to define more clearly how various offences should be judged, but I do not believe that juries cannot determine what is careless driving. Juries find it very easy to determine what is careless driving; their difficult is having to decide when careless driving becomes dangerous.
The debate is at the top end of the spectrum, not the bottom. I do not believe that anyone would be convicted were it clear that the sunlight had unexpectedly caught their eye and blinded them for a moment. I doubt whether anyone would be charged under such circumstances. Juries are composed of sensible women and men, many of them drivers, who can easily determine what is careless; but they have problems at the upper level, when trying to decide whether driving might be dangerous.

Owen Paterson: I entirely agree with the Minister. That is exactly why we framed our amendments as we did. Throughout this debate, horrific cases have been cited. I looked again at the cases that the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East mentioned on Second Reading, and I contend that they would now be appropriately addressed by the two new offences that we propose, of reckless or far below at 14 years and dangerous or significantly below at seven years.
Perhaps I am being a little precious, but the Committee has concentrated too much on my suggestion that being blinded could be careless. I totally agree that there is a problem further up the scale, and we have gone into the matter in some depth to try to address exactly that problem.

Stephen Ladyman: I do not for a minute question that the hon. Gentleman believes passionately that he has come up with the solution to the problem; I just do not for a second think that it would work. If he wants to intervene on me, perhaps he will give me an example of  something “far below” the expected standard but not “significantly below” it. I do not see how that moves us forward.
We have clear guidance on what constitutes carelessness; it may have been the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen)—I cannot remember—who asked what it might consist of. First, of course, it is context-dependent. What would constitute carelessness in someone driving past the school gates at 3.30 pm when all the children come out could be different from what would constitute carelessness on a clear, empty road. That is where juries’ common sense will contribute.
The Crown Prosecution Service already provides guidance about what types of case it will charge with carelessness. Examples of driving that they believe amount to driving without due care and attention include overtaking on the inside, driving inappropriately close to another vehicle, driving through a red light and emerging from a side road into the path of another vehicle. All sorts of case law and common practice can help us to define carelessness, and no driver needs to fear that a momentary lapse of judgment or something unexpected that they could not possibly predict will have an impact on their driving and that they will subsequently be prosecuted for causing death by careless driving.
I believe that there is much evidence that the offence in question needs to be put on the statute book. We could probably debate it all day and come no nearer to agreeing. I do not believe that the solution put forward by the Conservative Front Bench—although it is, I acknowledge, a laudable effort—would make things easier. I remind the Conservative Front Bench that we withdrew the term “reckless driving”—I think that it was abolished in 1991—because recklessness as a definition did not work in the context of road traffic offences, although it is a term used in other branches of the law. It would be bizarre to conclude now that we should replace it in road traffic law.
It is right that magistrates courts should have the opportunity to give custodial sentences; otherwise some people will plead guilty to offences in the magistrates court so as to face a much less severe, non-custodial sentence than they might in the Crown court. I do not believe that I shall ever convince Opposition Members, or that they will suddenly see the light on the road to Damascus, but we clearly have common ground in seeing a need to fix the current law. The Government have come up with a solution that will offer people fairness if they face a charge, but will also provide justice to people who have lost someone.

Owen Paterson: The Minister is being very generous in giving way. Will he address one of our big concerns—that the whole offence is consequent on the consequences of the action, and not the intention?

Stephen Ladyman: The seriousness of the offence will of course have to be judged by the court when sentence is decided on. However, the consequence of the action is already a factor in determining legal proceedings. In my home county of Kent, a recent robbery was  variously described in the newspapers as resulting in the taking between £30 million and £50 million. When those people are brought to justice and they stand in front of the court, I doubt that their barrister will argue that the seriousness of their offence should not be taken into consideration and that they should be given the same treatment as a shoplifter because, morally, all they have done is the same thing; they stole, the shoplifter stole.
The simple fact is that the seriousness of the consequences is a factor. [Interruption.] I know what the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) is going to say, so he does not need to say it. The courts will have to balance the seriousness of the act of carelessness, the extent to which the act was culpable, the level to which it fell below the standard that we expect of a driver and the fact that as a consequence of the act, an individual has died. I do not believe that that is wrong; I believe that the public expect it.

Alistair Carmichael: This issue is central to the debate. Will the Minister confirm that the sentence will continue to be imposed according to the standard of driving exhibited and within the range put down by Parliament? As well as the new offence, has he considered whether the ordinary section 3 offence would be consistent with careless and inconsiderate driving and carry a custodial sentence?

Stephen Ladyman: The hon. Gentleman is right. I do not expect somebody who is charged with causing death by careless driving automatically to receive a custodial sentence simply because an individual has died. It will be for the courts to decide how far their carelessness fell below the standard required. I struggle to understand why Opposition Members are so worried about that. It seems clear that judges and juries are in a good position to make those judgments. They do it all the time.
The individual will have to explain the circumstances of their carelessness and what was going through their mind, and the judge will make a determination based on that. The difficulty that juries have is determining not what is careless, nor the level of carelessness, but the difference between carelessness and dangerous driving. That is why it has always been so difficult to prove an offence of causing death by dangerous driving, and why the offence under discussion will almost always be used as an alternative verdict when somebody is charged with causing death by dangerous driving.
I have no doubt that the number of cases will be limited. It will be up to the Crown Prosecution Service to use the offence when it is the primary charge on the indictment, but in my view, it will normally be used in an alternative verdict.

Stephen Hammond: I was listening to the Minister carefully. He reiterated his point that previously, juries had difficulty deciding what was dangerous and what  was careless. Why does he think it will be any easier for juries to graduate carelessness? I am not sure that I follow his point.

Stephen Ladyman: It would be a matter for judges to graduate the level of carelessness; the jury would determine that somebody was careless, somebody died and that the individual was therefore guilty. The judge would then use sentencing guidelines—and the untold reservoirs of wisdom that we are told all judges have—to determine the seriousness of the offence and the sentence to impose. I do not see that that is any different from the judgments that we expect judges to make when they sentence under any other area of law.

Alistair Carmichael: I freely admit that I would probably know the answer to this question if I had read the Bill more carefully. As things stand, automatic alternatives are implied in the Road Traffic Act. For section 2, there is an automatic alternative available to the court to convict under section 3. Is it envisaged and, in fact, provided for, that there should be an automatic alternative open to the court if a charge is made under section 1?

Stephen Ladyman: I believe that that is the case, but I will correct that answer later if it is not. Indeed, we deal in other parts of the Bill with the possibility of manslaughter being an alternative verdict for more serious cases under other charges.

Rosemary McKenna: Will my hon. Friend comment on my question about the charge of causing serious injury by dangerous and careless, or careless driving?

Stephen Ladyman: I apologise for forgetting that my hon. Friend asked that question. I am not sure that I have a terribly convincing answer for her. This is an imperfect world, and we have to draw lines somewhere. One of the reasons why we rejected the Opposition’s amendment on recklessness is because it has been recognised that we need to make the criteria available to the courts as objective as possible. The old crime of reckless driving involved a subjective decision that we needed to get out of the legal system. Likewise, when we come to whether there should be another offence of causing serious injury by careless driving, we come to subjective decisions about what constitutes serious injury, whereas, of course, there is no doubt whatsoever about the difference between death and lesser injuries.
I have to confess that, last but not least, there is the issue of resources—it comes down to good old-fashioned money. If we were to allow custodial sentences for serious injury, many more people would be sent to prison. That would require many more prison places, which would require us to build more prisons or to let out some people who are already in prison. Unfortunately, we have to make some dirty compromises. That is why I say that the explanation will not perfectly satisfy her.
The offence of causing death by careless driving is clear and objective, and it closes at least one existing loophole. I imagine that she and other hon. Friends will continue to campaign for a further change to the law, and I look forward to those debates.
 I have probably said enough. I hope that I have answered Members’ questions. I doubt that I have convinced Opposition Members, but I have no doubt whatever that my hon. Friends were convinced even before I started to speak and will support Government amendment No. 1, resist the Opposition amendments and support the clause standing part.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 9, Noes 5.

NOES

Question accordingly agreed to.

Owen Paterson: Would it be correct for us to take amendment No. 63 and all our new clauses together, Sir Nicholas?

Janet Anderson: I am advised that the hon. Gentleman could move for a vote on amendment No. 63. Is that his wish?

Owen Paterson: Yes.

Amendment proposed: No. 63, in clause 20, page 24, line 39, column 4, leave out
‘5 years or a fine or both’
and insert ‘a fine’—[Mr. Paterson.]

The Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes 9.

NOES

Question accordingly negatived.

Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 11, Noes 5.

NOES

Question accordingly agreed to.

Clause 20, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 21 - Causing death by driving: unlicensed, disqualified or uninsured drivers

Stephen Hammond: I beg to move amendment No. 90, in clause 21, page 25, leave out lines 22 and 23.

Janet Anderson: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 91, in clause 21, page 25, line 28, column 2, leave out ‘unlicensed, disqualified or uninsured’ and insert ‘unlicensed or disqualified’.
No. 93, in clause 21, page 25, line 33, column 3, leave out ‘summarily’.
No. 94, in clause 21, page 25, column 4, leave out lines 33 to 39.
No. 92, in clause 21, page 25, line 35, column 2, leave out ‘unlicensed, disqualified or uninsured’ and insert ‘unlicensed or disqualified’.

Stephen Hammond: Before I came to the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire and I visited the Minister, who was generous with his time. He gave us a preliminary briefing on the Bill and some explanations to our questions.
We were uncertain about the exact intention behind clause 21, and, if I understood correctly, the Minister gave us the following explanation: if a person is in, or driving, a car that is uninsured, unlicensed or while disqualified, and that car is in an accident that results in the death of another, whether or not any causal behaviour was attached to the car or driver, that person would be charged with causing death. The Bill effectively says that the death would not have occurred had that vehicle not been on the road, and that therefore the driver or passenger has caused death simply by being in the car.
My hon. Friends and I were slightly perplexed by that explanation, as too were those from whom we took legal advice. Our amendments are part probing and part principled. At the end of the debate, should we have been reassured by the Minister that either some of our misgivings are misconceived or ill  understood, or that on reflection he will come some way to compromise with us, I should be happy to withdraw the amendment.
Perhaps I might explain my misgivings with two examples. First, let us take the case of a hard-working Member of Parliament who represents, say, a Scottish constituency, and who, on a Monday, drives to either the train station of the airport, parks his car, travels to London by train or by air and has a hard-working week in London—as I am sure we all do working for the benefit of constituents. On the Thursday, the MP flies home and notices that his insurance expired the day before, resolves in his own mind to renew the insurance in the morning and drives home. On the way home, a group of youths leaving a local pub overtake another car, collide with the MP’s car, hit a wall and spin out of control, causing the death of one of the passengers. Under the Bill, the MP would be charged with causing that death, even thought he did not cause the death, he did not drive carelessly or even dangerously, and there was no intent. If anything he was the victim of the accident, yet he would be charged if the Bill is not amended.
At the moment, it is common practice—as I am sure that the Minister will concede—for the police, in such circumstances, and insurance companies, to allow at least a fortnight, but in some cases, up to a month, for insurance renewal. Equally, it is similar practice to do so for car licences.

Alistair Carmichael: I am not sure if my question will help or hinder the hon. Gentleman, but I will ask it anyway. In the circumstances that he has outlined—I dare say that in those circumstances I should declare an interest—in what way could that MP be said to have caused the death of the passenger? Surely, someone else caused the death?

Stephen Hammond: That question might be best addressed to the Minister. The answer is that he caused the death simply by being in the car when it was uninsured, even though it had been uninsured for just two days and he had intended to renew the insurance. As I understand the Minister’s explanation, under clause 21, that person would be charged.
Let us take a second example involving the same MP—poor chap. On Thursday night, he arrives home to similar circumstances and resolves to renew his insurance in the morning. However, he has to drive home via a busy A road or motorway on which there has been an accident. Cars are forced to stop, but someone driving too close to him shunts him from behind, the MP shunts the next vehicle, which shunts the next one, and then the one in front of that goes across the carriageway and the driver is killed. As I understand it, only one person in that chain of events is likely to be charged—the MP, for being in his car without insurance.
As we have said all the way through deliberations on the Bill, our intention is to pursue and catch the hardened few who abuse the motoring laws of our country and to make the roads safe for the other 34  million mainly law-abiding drivers. It is the Government’s intention also to catch the hardcore of drivers who disregard our laws, drive untaxed, unlicensed and uninsured, and while disqualified. However, it is a question of long periods, with no end. The trouble with the clause is that no account can be taken, when someone is charged with an offence—particularly as to insurance—of whether their insurance ran out the previous day or they never had any. I am sure that the Government intend to catch those people who have never had insurance, or who have not renewed it after what, under the old common practice, was a fortnight’s leave of grace. A significant step change is happening in the law.
There are currently no custodial sentences for driving unlicensed or uninsured—only non-custodial fines or penalty points. We support the Government with respect to drivers who are persistently unlicensed or uninsured, but there appears to be no leeway or discretion. Whereas we highlighted in our discussion on the previous clause the fact that all too often the CPS fails to prosecute people who should be charged with manslaughter or dangerous driving because of uncertainty about the charge and the conviction rate, under clause 21 conviction would be a certainty.
We entirely agree with the Government that continual offenders should be caught and harshly dealt with. It is clear to us, for instance, that far too many young men drive around and fail to insure their cars, because the premium is higher than the fine that they might receive. That is an anomaly that might easily be remedied by increasing the fine and providing for a second offence of driving uninsured to attract a custodial sentence.
Royal Bank of Scotland insurance has rightly stated in a briefing that I am sure all members of the Committee have received that reducing the number of uninsured drivers will reap significant road safety benefits. It has some ideas on reducing the cost of insurance for young drivers. I want some reassurance from the Minister this morning, particularly on the point about insurance—and I am sure that he can see the anomaly that I am driving at, of the lack of leeway in the law. We perhaps should have framed our amendments more tightly, including a time scale within which to renew, but many people suffer a slip of the mind on insurance.
We discussed last week whether people try to kid insurance companies or suffer genuine slips of the mind. However, the clause will make criminals of many people who drive their car when they have not renewed within the common period of grace of about a fortnight accepted by the police. I hope that the Minister will accept that we strongly support what we believe to be the intention behind the clause; we support the prevention, detection and punishment of persistent offending. However, the clause will have a by-product that I am not sure the Government intend. If they do intend it, that will, potentially, make criminals of many law-abiding citizens.

Brian Iddon: How can a driver who is already insured have a slip of the mind, when all responsible insurance companies notify drivers well in advance of the need to renew their insurance? Surely a person who does not do so is negligent. [Interruption.]

Stephen Hammond: From a sedentary position my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk said that that person might be a busy MP. Indeed, people do get prior warning—of when their MOT is due, and when they are due to renew all sorts of things. However, not everyone necessarily remembers. The question is whether that is negligent or just careless. The issue that I am concerned about is that the police accept a common period of grace of about a fortnight after the renewal date, which gives time to renew the insurance.

Brian Iddon: Does the hon. Gentleman know of any case in which a person has killed someone during that period of grace and the insurance company has bailed the driver out?

Stephen Hammond: No, I do not, but I am not sure that that is the point. The clause is not about that. It creates an offence. It is not a question of the insurance company bailing a driver out. Under the clause, simply by getting in the car, that driver will, if involved in an accident where there is a death, be the person charged with causing death.

Greg Knight: I rise to add my voice to that of my hon. Friend, in pursuing the probing nature of the amendment. The Minister owes the Committee an explanation as to why he thinks the clause is necessary. The purpose may be to bring home to all drivers the seriousness of driving either without a licence or insurance, or while disqualified. On the face of it, that seems a reasonable position, but my question for the Minister is whether in certain circumstances the clause could operate in a too heavy-handed manner. I think that that was the essence of what my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon was seeking to argue.
Proposed new section 3ZB of the Road Traffic Act 1988 states:
“A person is guilty of an offence under this section if he causes the death of another person by driving a motor vehicle on a road and, at the time when he is driving, the circumstances are such that he is committing an offence”
by driving without a licence, while disqualified or without insurance. However, does not the phrase “if he causes the death” mean that a death happens? If two vehicles collide in the centre of the road and it is one driver’s fault, but the driver who is not at fault is without insurance, is he or she not at risk of being charged, because a death has occurred? That is my first question.
Secondly, if the Minister convinces the Committee that we need the clause, there is a case for allowing some statutory mitigation to prevent a person from being charged. There is a world of difference between a yob who has never had insurance for his motor vehicle and who drives round knowing that he does not have insurance and—never mind the Member of Parliament—the little old lady who puts her insurance renewal document behind the clock and forgets. She has had insurance, but it has lapsed.
What about those situations where the insurance company says, “Well, there was a valid certificate of insurance in force, but this motorist didn’t tell us that there was change in their circumstances, so we are avoiding the policy.”? For my policy, I have to say every year whether the vehicle will be kept garaged during the evening and whether I have had any endorsements on my licence since I last had insurance with that company. To those who fail to notify the insurance company of any change—perhaps a son or other relative puts their car in the garage and the policy holder’s car is left outside—it will argue that the contract of insurance is not valid, because of the special nature of the contract between the motorist and the company. What happens in those circumstances if, sadly, someone is involved in an accident where a death is caused? Are they to be charged under the clause in addition to any other charges that they may face?
Driving without insurance is a serious offence and the consequences can be devastating, not only for the family of the person who is killed. Someone who kills someone else while driving without insurance, but who has money and assets—a freehold property and perhaps a couple of motor vehicles, for example—can find all that property at risk in a civil action resulting from that death. The Minister is saying in effect that, in addition to perhaps losing all their assets and having to sell their home to pay for civil action, someone who kills someone while driving without insurance could end up losing their job by serving two years in prison.
Is the clause reasonable in those circumstances? Why has the Minister included the offences related to insurance? Why does he not consider it appropriate to allow statutory mitigating circumstances to apply where someone can show that they had insurance that has recently lapsed or where the insurance has been avoided by the company, owing to someone not notifying it of a change of circumstances?

It being One o’clock, The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned till this day at half-past Four o’clock.